Referenced By / 2001: A Space Odyssey

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Much like several other films from Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a groundbreaking work that entered pop culture for being influential to other forms of media and for having iconic and easily recognizable scenes that keep getting homaged and parodied to death to this day.

See also The Monolith and Also sprach Zarathustra.

• An early-2000s Cartoon Network bumper (that often played before movie presentations) featured a bunch of monkeys (including Magilla Gorilla, Grape Ape and I. R. Baboon) gathering around the Cartoon Network logo while "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays.
• The Volume 2, No. 1 Issue of "Computer Gaming World" magazine, published January 1982, features a cover depicting ape-men gathered around a giant, glowing black floppy disk game cartridge set in a rocky landscape. The floppy disk is positioned to resemble the Monolith.
• IBM's "Codernauts" advertising campaign showed two men dressed in blue 2001-style spacesuits.

Anime & Manga

• 2001 Nights is meant to be a loveletter to classic hard scifi stories, including Arthur C. Clarke's works. The title itself, and some storylines (mainly "Our Great Ancestors", "Sea of Fertility", "Discovery" and "Lucifer Rising") contain many nods to 2001.

• A Certain Scientific Railgun: In an episode, the girls go to do their swimsuits photoshoots on a holodeck which promptly glitches out and places them on the Moon with the Monolith and Also sprach Zarathustra playing.
• Bleach has Aizen, who in the English dub speaks with a creepy, soft monotone completely devoid of emotion. Kyle Hebert cites the voice of HAL as an inspiration.
• Cowboy Bebop has very strong references to the film in two episodes:
  • "Jamming with Edward" features a very HAL-like AI in both mannerisms and design. Luckily, this AI is not as sinister in intentions as HAL.
  • "Toys in the Attic" ends with Spike throwing the contaminated fridge into space. The crew then float around in the Bebop unconscious as "Waltz of the Flowers" plays and the ship flies on autopilot, a clear reference to the opening "Blue Danube Waltz" sequence in Odyssey.
• The episode of Galaxy Angel where Mint gets turned into a tree ends in a loose parody of the Star Child ending, as the world ends and Mint is reborn on another planet as a sprout.
• Millennium Actress features a fictional SciFi picture that Bookends the film which homages 2001 with the subterranean base on the Moon and the look of the spacesuits.
• The RB-79 Ball from Mobile Suit Gundam is evocative of the Discovery's space pods, but they're considerably larger. Balls were originally built as colony construction vehicles before they were turned into Improvised Weapons by the Earth Federation alongside the GMs in large numbers during the One Year War against the Principality of Zeon.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion pays tribute to 2001 with SEELE members holding their meetings through computerized black slabs that resemble the Monolith. In the Rebuild continuity NERV also set up a lunar base where Evangelion Mark.06 is being built within a pit resembling the excavated Monolith.
• An odd parodic example in the recap episode of Samurai Champloo during a scene with Mugen verbally abusing a Monk. The use of music and the camera panning from behind the Monk's head invokes the famous opening sequence of the Sun rising above the Earth.
• The Mystery of Mamo has a shot near the end of the film (when Mamo's brain floats into the Sun) that homages the opening planet sequence of Odyssey.

Comic Books

• Marvel Universe: Jack Kirby adapted 2001: A Space Odyssey in comic form before making more original stories based on that universe, introducing the character of Machine Man and heavily utilizing The Monolith as well, linking it to the Celestials.
• The variant cover◊ of issue #16 of Crossed +100 shows the astronauts at the Monolith being infected.
• The Italian comic Dylan Dog, being quite Reference Overdosed, hasn't skimped on homaging 2001 in various occasions, standing out in these:
  • "Alpha and Omega" (#9) is pretty much Tiziano Sclavi's remix of 2001, with Dylan and the scientists wearing spacesuits and moving to see the crashed Omega probe in a fashion that is directly based on Floyd and his group inspecting the monolith on the Moon. And just like the monolith, the Omega probe releases a high pitched sound when it gets touched. Afterwards a voice from inside the probe gives Dylan an Exposition Dump on how "Alpha" was a chimp sent in deep space that became a higher being after going through a black hole that resembles the Stargate sequence, and it has returned to Earth to deliver a gift before dying. In the final narration, Dylan mentions that the Girl of the Week expects a baby (having been impregnated by an extension of Alpha), and the story ends with a giant Star Child-like figure looming in space.
  • "Story of Nobody" (#43) presents an Alternate Universe created by a dying Mister Nobody, in which Dylan and Xabarax aren't related or enemies and the latter mentions how in their universe the Eiffel Tower is in London and the Discovery ship is real and going on a mission to Jupiter. When Nobody gets shot by Alternate!Dylan causing the deletion of this AU before Nobody awakens as a zombie in the "canon" universe, Space Station V also appears.
• The Polish-French comic The Great Power of Chninkel features a mysterious God who appears as a black monolith to its mortal creations. As it turns out, the entire story is a Stealth Prequel to 2001.
• In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ditches the tetrahedron of transparent crystal from The Sentinel and depicts The Monolith as shown in Kubrick's film and serving the same purpose as cryptic civilization seeders and primordial observers on Earth, the Moon and Jupiter. In Volume III: Century it is written that Orlando has had sex with the Moon-watcher (identified as a "Troglodyte of Abyssinia") who then allowed her to touch the shards of the Monolith gaining a great deal of knowledge. In The Tempest, after the Nautilus VIII escapes Earth's destruction, the crew observes a massive cluster of Monoliths that will turn Jupiter into a second star. The cover art of Issue #6 of The Tempest also shows Orlando wearing a green 2001: A Space Odyssey spacesuit.
• The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: The third delivery the Simpsons do with the Planet Express crew has them delivering a Monolith to Dave Bowman, the latter appearing as a Star Child.

Comic Strips

• In the FoxTrot strip for December 31, 2000, Jason dresses in an ape costume and throws a bunch of bones over a snow monolith, hoping one of them will turn into a spaceship.

Fan Works

• In the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic ALIEN!!!, the Emergency Homophobic Hologram refuses to unlock the hatch to the escape pod, causing Kaneway to say, "Open the pod bay door, Hol!" The EHH of course replies that his mission is too important to allow them to jeopardize it.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise Parody Fic "Farce Contact", someone reaches out to touch the Monolith only to have it topple over onto Captain Archer's foot.
• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Proton reads a newspaper headline: Astronaut Dave Bowman Turned into Giant Star Baby. Huge Diaper Urgently Required. The Great Calculator also sings "Daisy...Daisy..." after being damaged until Proton tells it to knock off the karaoke, and there's a reference to "toroid space stations waltzing to Blue Danube" and The Monolith being used as the President's coffee table.
  • When Captain Kaneway first enters the crashed alien spacecraft, she says: "My God, it's full of shuttles!"
  • The Master Computer of the Nostromo isn't happy when the crew want to blow up the ship to kill the alien. "If I were a HAL-9000 I would kill you where you stand!"

Films — Animation

• Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood: 2001 is not only referenced by the film's title, but in-universe there's a scene in which Stan and his family go watch it on the big screen, given it's set in The '60s.
• Lightyear: There's a brief homage to the horizon of colorful patterned lights from the Stargate sequence when Buzz achieves hyperspeed (although unlike 2001's, it goes from being horizontal to vertical).
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines: PAL is partly based on HAL, as both are AIs gone rogue.
• The Peanuts Movie: The film's teaser trailer starts out like this film, in which "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays while the sun rises over what appears to be a planet, but is really Charlie Brown's bald head.
• Robots: A delirious Bigweld sings a slowed-down rendition of "Daisy Bell" while Rodney tries to repair him.
• WALL•E:
  • AUTO, the autopilot of the Axiom, is clearly based on HAL with its glowing red eye and Creepy Monotone voice. Also, like HAL, AUTO turns antagonistic due to having received conflicting orders.
  • Also sprach Zarathustra is played in the film's climax, when Captain McCrea stands up.

Films — Live-Action

• A Clockwork Orange: The soundtrack album for the film is displayed at the record store. Appropriately, this film is also directed by Stanley Kubrick.
• In Ad Astra the protagonist's journey to the Moon colony subtly mirrors Floyd's, with the commercial space vehicle (complete with attendants) he travels on having visual nods to the design of the Aries 1B Lunar Lander.
• Airplane II: The Sequel features a computer called ROK 9000 in control of a Moon shuttle, which malfunctions and kills crew members in a parody of HAL.
• Alien:
  • Ridley Scott cited the film as an influence on Alien, mostly in its depiction of life in space. Ash is also a stand-in for HAL, both being A.I.s with a secret order, although HAL murders due to a malfunction, whereas Ash is following the Company's Evil Plan in order to preserve the alien for them even at the cost of the crew.
  • Aliens opens with Ripley's Sleeper Starship escape shuttle drifting off in space to a score that references "Gayane Adagio", the piece 2001 used while establishing the Discovery heading to Jupiter after the Time Skip.
  • The Weyland Industries satellite at the beginning of Alien vs. Predator (2004) has a HAL-esque red camera "eye".
  • Prometheus has an eerie opening scene set before the dawn of mankind, the mysterious black mutagenic ooze being essentially a nightmarish version of the Monolith, and brings back the moral ambiguity of an A.I. character in the form of David 8.
  • Alien: Romulus' Silence Is Golden opening has the retrieval of the cocooned Alien surrounded by a protective-suited équipe set to a creepy score that echoes the astronauts inspecting the Monolith on the moon.
• The prologue of Barbie (2023) parodies the opening sequence, with little girls as the apes, baby dolls as bones, and Barbie herself as the monolith.
• Beyond the Black Rainbow: The Sentionaut's adherent red suit and the film's sterile Ascetic Aesthetic setting with eerie solid red lighting reference David Bowman's spacesuit and the scene of HAL's deactivation.
• The 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptation uses the famous scene of the apes surrounding the Monolith and the "Also sprach Zarathustra" theme for the sequence in the TV teleportation room. Wonka amusingly replaces the Monolith for a chocolate bar in order to show his visitors how a TV can be used as a teleporter for Wonka chocolate.
• Clueless: Cher's black cell phone is filmed in a way that makes it look like a monolith while "Also sprach Zarathustra" is playing.
• Demolition Man: Simon Phoenix argues with a talking public computer, mockingly calling it "HAL".
• Dark Star: The A.I. equipped Thermostellar Bomb #20 receiving an erroneous order to deploy itself threatening the crew due to a malfunction has clearly taken some inspiration from HAL 9000. One of the film's Tag Lines, "The Spaced Out Odyssey", also references 2001.
• Duel of the Ironfist, a martial arts film, for some reason decided to "borrow" Sprach Zathura as background music for its fight scenes (most likely without permission). It runs into Soundtrack Dissonance territory when the hero killed the mob leader responsible for his father's death... and the opening notes of 2001 synchs with the villain bleeding out.
• In Everything Everywhere All at Once, a parody of the opening sequence with the apes appears as part of the universe where everyone has hot dog fingers, complete with a deliberately off-key and off-tempo version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" playing in the background.
• In First Man the scene of the Gemini 8 docking with its Agena Target Vehicle to the tune of the elegant Blue Danube-inspired track Docking Waltz is a nod to 2001.
• In Good Bye, Lenin! Denis shows a wedding video with the Bouquet Toss edited like the famous Match Cut of the man-ape throwing the bone into the sky, which Alex doesn't recognize.
• History of the World Part I opens with a parody of the "Dawn of Man" sequence.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) the Heart of Gold starship is designed like a mix between the lunar carrier and the frontal section of the Discovery. Word of God stated that the slapping things on the Vogon homeworld are meant to be inversions of the Monolith: instead of gifting intelligence, they hit you if you think of something, evolving the Vogons into unimaginative slobs (also explaining their squashed noses).
• Independence Day: David's computer greets him with an image of HAL and the text, "Good morning, Dave..."
• In Interstellar the robot buddies TARS, PLEX, CASE and KIPP have a design intended to homage the monolith.
• Love & Mercy: The sequence of Brian Wilson in bed at the end, and seeing a younger version of himself, is an homage to 2001.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Eternals, when the Domo decloaks for the first time and only the front is visible, it resembles a monolith.
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 the heroes wear colorful Zeerust spacesuits inspired by those from 2001 when they have to infiltrate into the Orgoscope.
• During the climax of Men in Black (1997), K tells Edgar the Bug that he's under arrest for violating "number 4-1-53 of the Tycho Treaty", referencing the lunar crater where a Monolith is found.
• Mission to Mars borrows a lot of designs and visuals from 2001, such as the rotating Centrifugal Gravity structures, the design of the space suit helmets, and the artsy alien contact.
• In Mr. Nobody the protagonist is a centenary man in The Future who lives alone in a brightly lit white room, similar to David Bowman at the end of 2001, and another timeline focuses on him taking a trip to Mars to spread the ashes of his dead spouse there. The spacecraft used for the voyage is a Sleeper Starship with large rotating wheel habitats that make it resemble Space Station V, and classical music ("Casta Diva" and "Pavane Op. 50") is played during its scenes.
• Moon has the protagonist working at a moonbase that has an octagonal corridor similar to the one David walks through inside the Discovery ship. It also features GERTY, an inversion of a HAL 9000 A.I. who is a benevolent Robot Buddy through and through (having a blue eye instead of HAL's red).
• Oblivion (2013) contains numerous nods to 2001, such as the drones that resemble the EVA pods, the protagonist being former commander of a spacecraft called The Odyssey bound to a mission to Titan, The Tet having HAL's red eye and the unborn Jack and Vika clones being lit like the Star Child.
• Saturday Night Fever: The main character is a regular dancer at a disco nightclub called "2001 Odyssey".
• Save the Green Planet! has a sequence that closely follows the first scene from 2001, showing early humans being created next to an obelisk from space, and apelike humans howling and smashing bones.
• Woody Allen cast actor Douglas Rain (HAL) in an Uncredited Role as the voice of the controlling computer in the closing sequences of Sleeper.
• Star Wars:
  • In A New Hope the Death Star's docking bay where the Millennium Falcon lands looks very similar to Space Station V's.
  • In The Phantom Menace one of the EVA pods can be seen in Watto's junkyard. The reference book Star Wars: Complete Locations has some fun by identifying it as "a repair and maintenance pod of unknown origin."
  • In Revenge of the Sith the establishing shot of the Polis Massa asteroid base is framed similarly to a shot of the Clavius Moon Base during Floyd's landing, with astronauts in the foreground.
• Spaceballs: When the villains decide to go at "Ludicrous Speed", their ship enters a plaid tunnel which is a parody of the Stargate sequence.
• Starship Troopers (1997) features a settlement on the moon called Tereshkova Base that design-wise is clearly inspired by the look of Clavius Base from 2001.
• Steve Jobs: At the first product launch, Steve tells Joanna the reason why he wants the computer they're launching to say "Hello" is he wants to people to get past the idea of computers being scary. Joanna responds that "The computer in 2001 said hello all the time and it still scared the shit out of me".
• The Strawberry Statement: Simon has the soundtrack album in his apartment. His roommate Charlie has sex with a girl to "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
• The Substance has several, from the psychedelic sequences that reference the Stargate scene, the use of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" to the story being divided in three chapters presented with title cards.
• In Sunshine the protagonists have to jet themselves in space unprotected to get from airlock to airlock like Dave Bowman does to get back into the Discovery; the voice of the computer of Icarus II slows down and deepens when the cores are pulled out in reference to HAL's "death" and in the ending three Monolith-like sculptures can be seen at the snow-ridden Sidney park (which are actually located in Stockholm).
• In TRON: Legacy an older Kevin Flynn reveals to be living in a safehouse that is aesthetically a shout-out to the room David Bowman spends the rest of his life in after the Stargate sequence, with brightly lit floors and Renaissance furniture.
• Ultra Q The Movie: Legend of the Stars practically re-creates the Stargate Sequence in the opening credits with the psychedelic effects and an embryo in space as the narration talks about the origin of mankind.
• Parodied in Zoolander when Derek and Hansel struggle to work a computer. They begin acting like apes, slapping the computer and howling as the "Also sprach Zarathustra" theme kicks in. The scene ends with Hansel nearly smashing the computer with a bone.

Literature

• Isaac Asimov's Extraterrestrial Civilizations: References this work for the motif of aliens observing Earth's evolution from hominids to space travel.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: When the boys manage to turn on the lamp via the internet, Howard celebrates by playing "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
• The Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on the planets included an obligatory parody:
  Bill: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
  HAL: I'm sorry, Bill. I'm afraid I can't do that.
  Bill: HAL. I need you to open the pod bay doors, HAL.
  HAL: I'm afraid I can't do that, Bill. This show on the planets is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
  Bill: HAL.
  HAL: Goodbye, Bill.
  Bill: HAL! C'MON, OPEN THE DOORS, WILL YA! HAAAAALLLL!
• Doctor Who: The title sequences used from 1973 to 1980 are inspired by the Star Gate sequence, similarly using slit-scan photography to visualize the time vortex.
• Blake's 7: In "Breakdown", the crew travels through an Unknown Phenomenon and discovers that the other side is full of stars.
• The Electric Company (1971): The "Monolith" animated cartoon segments, many of which directly referencing "2001" in one way or another and featuring a white monolith that, through seismic disturbance, crumbled apart to reveal a letter dipthong or small sight word. They were popular enough to induce Sesame Street to make two such cartoons for the words "me" and "amor".
• The Expanse: Writer Mark Fergus explained at San Diego Comic-Con 2016 that Paj's severed arm spinning end over end in "Dulcinea" was intended to be a reference to the bone that does the same in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but admitted it was so abstract that almost nobody got it.
• Married... with Children:
  • In "The Computer Show", Al's talking computer says "What are you doing, Al?" as he is about to smash it.
  • In "Children of the Corns", Peg and Kelly are amazed by a microwave oven and surround it as if it were the Monolith.
• On an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Terry Gilliam, a big fan of Kubrick in general (and of 2001 in particular), provided an animated link between two sketches that was a parody of the opening credit sequence.
• In the series finale of Mr. Robot the "stargate" sequence is referenced by the the stream of pictures that come out of the projector light, followed by the extreme close-up on Elliot's eye like David Bowman's.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 had the design of the Satellite of Love, based on the bone-shaped satellite featured in the match cut from prehistoria to the future. The one-eyed design of the robot Gypsy led the show to do various scenes comparing it to HAL, including a scene from the 1996 feature film, where the opening featuring Mike Nelson jogging along the walls of the Satellite of Love parodies the scene where Frank Poole does the same in the Discovery.
• Power Rangers RPM's Big Bad is a sentient Computer Virus called Venjix, who's heavily based on both Skynet (for causing an apocalyptic Robot War) and HAL 9000 (for his main apperance as a bright red robotic eye).
• Probe's "Computer Logic, Part 2": The episode ends with Austin James demolishing the Artificial Intelligence with a fire axe while shouting, "Sing 'Daisy'!"
• Reba had Brock locked inside a car by the car's navigation system (because Brock warned it to stay away from Barbra Jean, whom the system was falling for) named "Al". After Brock demands Al to open the door...
  Al: I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.
• Red Dwarf:
  • The first two series' title music is very reminiscent of Also sprach Zarathustra, and the sequence is in line with scenes that use said music. The name Holly is a Shout-Out to 2001's HAL, too, as is the fact that Holly, or "Hol" as Lister sometimes calls him, refers to David Lister as "Dave." (In the radio sketch series Dave Hollins, Space Cadet on which the series is based, the computer was known as "Hab".) Eventually in Series VII, Holly gets around to saying: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
  • Holly singing as he gets erased in "Queeg" was inspired by HAL's death.
• In the second episode of Six Feet Under, Nate teases David about making the walk of shame by imitating HAL's voice.
  "I sense you're not being completely honest with me, Dave."
• Koenig's journey to the Moon in the first episode of Space: 1999 is clearly inspired by the one undertaken by Floyd (and, according to the timescale of the film, takes place in the same year!). The irony is that the epidemic on Clavius base is a cover story while there really is one on Alpha (sort of). Furthermore, the whole look and ambience of the TV show — the spacecraft (compare the Eagle to the Moon Bus or the Discovery to the Alien Battleship seen in several episodes of '1999'), the interior sets, the spacesuits, the use of classical music, even the layout of the Moonbase itself — is heavily influenced by the movie.

Music

• David Bowie's first single to chart, "Space Oddity" in 1969, was inspired by the film.
• Enforcer's 2019 album "Zenith" featured two songs that refered to the film: "Zenith of the Black Sun", which revolved around the "Dawn of Man" sequence, and the album closer "Ode to Death", the chorus of which prominently read:
  To Jupiter and beyond, beyond infinity
  On and on through space and time
  To unknown stellar domains
• In the Gorillaz music video "Strange Timez" Murdoc finds the Monolith on the moon, gets absorbed by it, and lands back on Earth in front of Kong Studios.
• The music video of Lenny Kravitz song "Believe" is an homage to 2001 (old furniture in white rooms, space suits...).
• In the music video for "I Love It" by Kanye West and Lil Pump, the pair are seen walking down a hallway reminiscent of the one seen in the film.
• Both "Murder" by New Order and the 2015 remastered version of "Perfect Sense, Part I" by Roger Waters sample HAL 9000's "my mind is going" dialogue. Waters originally wanted to use the sample on the original 1992 release of his song, but Stanley Kubrick turned him down, leading Waters to include a backmasked Take That! instead; the rights were eventually cleared for the remaster (though the sample had already been featured in live performances since 2002).
• Spacehog’s 2001 album, "The Hogyssey" was formerly called 2001: A Space Hogyssey. The album also contains an arrangement similar to "Also Sprach Zarathastura"
• Rivers by Skinny Puppy is loaded with various samples of HAL 9000 voicelines, especially from the film’s climax.

Video Games

• Afterbeat: The supercomputer the game takes place in, PA-MCP-02, is nicknamed "Hal" by A-Tan.
• In the Queen-takes-Knight animation in Battle Chess 4000 the Queen shows the Knight a bone she whips out of her corset and then throws it in the air. As it falls down, a black monolith erupts from the ground. Also Sprach Zarathustra starts playing, the Knight dazedly reaches for the monolith's surface... Then, suddenly, the music stops and the monolith folds up on hidden hinges, crushing the Knight to a pulp.
• Carmen Sandiego's ThinkQuick Challenge: The KnowBot who specializes in science is named HALieBot. In addition to her Meaningful Name, she speaks in a Creepy Monotone and has a singular eye; when a player answers a question correctly and thus "attacks" her, one of HALie's possible responses is "Dave...what are you doing, Dave?"
• Class of '09: When Jeffery takes a photo of Nicole changing in the locker room, she angrily demands him to delete the photos. Jeffery then proceeds to put on a rather poorly done Creepy Monotone and say "I'm afraid I can't do that."
• The Darkside Detective: BETI the AI has the same red camera eye as HAL, and her name is derived from his by way of the Paul Simon song "You Can Call Me Al".
• Destroy All Humans! 2 being set in the 60s, is full of 2001 references. For example, a pedestrian might say "Open the pod bay doors Hal!"
• The Docking Computer from Elite helpfully automates the process of landing on space stations, and also plays an 8-bit rendition of the Blue Daunbe Waltz as it does so.
  • The same thing happens in Elite Dangerous, albeit in much higher audio quality.
• The abstract VR Wide-Open Sandbox game Exo One pays a huge tribute to the visuals of 2001's stargate sequence. Plus, its backstory also revolves around a failed Jupiter mission.
• Grand Theft Auto: Nearly all the games in the 3D universe featured a computerized engine diagnostic system called the Kruton 9000, possibly a nod to HAL.
• The character Rambley the Raccoon in the Indigo Park. is an integrated AI for the titular park, and a video from the YouTube channel of the game's creator, UniqueGeese, has him and another character from the game duet a cover of Daisy Bell.
• HAL 9000 has a brief cameo in LEGO Dimensions. where he is summoned to distract GLaDOS.
• Hideo Kojima has also cited this as his favorite movie of all time and is frequently referenced in Metal Gear.
  • Otacon (Hal Emmerich) is named after HAL and Solid Snake's real name is David.
  • In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, at the end of each boss fight against the AI weapons, the player can climb into their red-lit AI cores and pull out their memory boards while they sing, just like Dave does to HAL.
• I Am an Insane Rogue A.I.: The titular AI has HAL's red sensor and the achievements page is made to look like HAL's memory banks.
• The villain of JumpStart Adventures 6th Grade: Mission Earthquest is a mad computer who takes over a space mission and talks in a soothing male voice. Sound familiar?
• Arguably, the Penetrator spaceship from the first Master of Orion game is modeled after the Discovery.
• Mouse: P.I. for Hire: Upon her defeat, the second Robo-Betty will stammer out "My mind is going..."
  Jack: Mine's already gone, sweetheart.
• Neopets: Neopets V2 is a bit HAL-like in nature, waking up with a variant of HAL's first words from the novel. When it's finally shut down, it says "What are you doing, doctor?" and helplessly pleads its creator to stop, just like HAL begged Dave to stop removing his memory chips.
  • One of the many page error codes says "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you view this," an obvious nod to the classic HAL line.
• Observation is a Whole-Plot Reference to 2001, including a remote space station, a bunch of dead crew, and an artificial intelligence being influenced by a mysterious alien thing. But with the fun twist that you play as the AI, and you help the surviving crewmembers investigate what has happened on the space station.
• Progressbar 95: The achievement for deleting System32 is called "Hello Dave". The directory itself is depicted as a large red eye similar to HAL.
• Spandex Force: The Freeze Ray is called PAL-9000 by the game, with a red eye that resembles HAL.
• In Spore, when your species advances from the Creature stage to the Tribal stage, the moment is signified by a cutscene showing one of them picking up a stick, bashing it on the ground in a fit of inspiration, then hurling it triumphantly into the air... only for it to fall back down onto their head.
• Star Birds: The opening cutscene, where a tribe of prehistoric birds learn to work together to pick fruit off a tree, before fading to the crew's ship launching off the birds' home planet
• Star Control: In the third installment, ICOM, your onboard hint machine, looks exactly like HAL 9000. Lampshaded, too, in one of the Captain's responses.
• The developers of the Xeno metaseries outright named themselves after the Monolith, as Monolith Soft. And to boot, further references to 2001: A Space Odyssey^NoteAs well as Arthur C. Clarke's prior novel, Childhood's End have been made across Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenogears: The game uses a ton of imagery and ideas from the film to tell its story. Probably the biggest one is the Zohar, very clearly based on the Monolith in the film that acts as some kind of other worldly item with powers beyond human understanding.
  • Xenosaga: The Zohar returns in Xenosaga and more or less serves the same function here as it does in Xenogears. In addition, the subtitle of the third game in the series is Also sprach Zarathustra, the name of the composition featured throughout the movie, most notably in the prehistoric and ending sequences.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles: The fate of Professor Klaus' good half is taken from 2001, where Klaus is seen as an old man and alone on a space station after making contact with the Zohar, just like David Bowman in the famous "Beyond the Infinity" sequence. Furthermore, the title of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's final boss theme is taken almost word-for-word◊ from a passage in the novelization of 2001. Not only that, but the three Trinity Processor cores all more or less serve the same role aboard the First Low Orbit Station that HAL-9000 does on the Discovery One, with Ontos being a borderline Expy of him.

Web Animation

• Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse features the recurring character of Closet, a HAL 9000 Expy with the same red eye, Creepy Monotone voice and occasional manic episodes.
• In the Helluva Boss episode "Seeing Stars" at Blitzo's headquarters there's a copy machine labeled "HELL 9000".
• In Red vs. Blue, after being blown up, Sheila the tank shuts off saying "I'm scared Dave, will I dream? Daisy... Daaaaisssyyy...."
• In the Stone Trek episode "20001 BC: A Space Oddity", the sun rises over the Monolith to Also Sprach Zarathustra until Fred Flintstone has his dinosaur dump it on a rockpile. Then Captain Kirkstone intercepts Dave Bowman's "My God, it's full of stars!" transmission and is not impressed. "So he was out in space—big deal!" Later when HAL refuses to open the pod bay door, Mr. Sprock just turns the handle.
• The Amazing Digital Circus:
  • In a sequence where Pomni runs through several exit doors, she eventually finds herself being flung into The Void, which she stares into. While she travels through it, it is framed and animated similarly to the film's famous Stargate scene, complete with Extreme Close-Up shots, dramatic music, and lights passing by her, though not multicolored like in the film.
  • In the sixth episode, Zooble mentions that Caine sings "Daisy Bell" if they do not answer the door when he shows up. Later in the episode, Jax and Pomni sing "Daisy Bell" when they knock on Zooble's door and they do not answer.

Web Comics

• Homestuck: Dirk's auto-responder, a fully sentient AI that only fails the Turing test because he wants to, often references this film.
  GT: (...) his aggravating liaison who is so far up his own ass with this hal 9000 schtick its ridonkulous. [sic]
  • He actually renamed himself to Lil Hal, as shown in a conversation with Jake.
    TT: I have decided on a new name, to distinguish myself from my human counterpart.
    GT: Really.
    GT: What is it?
    TT: Lil Hal.
    GT: Huh?
    GT: Why that name...
    TT: Just a reference to the protagonist of an ancient movie. You probably wouldn't like it.
    (...)
    TT: No, to pull that off, I would have to be far more advanced than my cinematic predecessor.
    TT: My abilities would have to go well beyond those of Mr. Hal 9000.
    TT: They would have to be, you could say...
    TT: Over 9000.
  • Dirk's glasses, in which Hal (Lil) resides, are shown to have red artificial eyes very much like Hal (9000)'s singular one.
  • Later on, as Dirk attempts to destroy Lil Hal:
    TT: I can't let you do that, Dirk.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd: Part 2 of "Double Vision" begins with a homage to the film regarding the ColecoVision's AC adapter.
• Drb0sch: In "down", the player encounters a terminal, a chess set, a chair and a radio, referencing the scene where HAL 9000 and Frank Poole play chess. The radio also plays morse code which translates to "THIS THINGS HOLLOW - IT GOES ON FOREVER AND-", a snippet of a famous quote from the book. The very last scene of the series more directly addresses a connection with the finale of 2001 when b0sch stumbling into a completely plain and white bedroom coupled with a view overlooking the wasted Earth from space before the game finally crashes for good, referencing both the scene where Bowman spends his final moments as a human before his rebirth into the Star Child and watching over the Earth thereafter, which implies a certain tone with the finale in this series after all the horror witnessed.
• JonTron chooses to go into the Star Gate rather than continue playing Cho Aniki in his Japanese Shoot-em Up episode.
• Mad God shows a giant black monolith being heavily fortified as the Assassin descends. In the ending, after a very trippy sequence, several monoliths come out of a black hole to fall onto planets to instill them with life and a destructive civilization and at the Alchemist's lab there's a fetus in a jar of red liquid that offers something of a perverse Homage Shot to the Star Child in 2001's ending.
• The ending to The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is a straight up parody of the film's ending, only instead of becoming a starchild, he becomes a turd.
  My god. It's all full of shit.
• The end of PONIES The Anthology II is basically a shot-for-shot remake of some of the Signature Scenes of 2001, namely, Pinkie Pie as Moon-Watcher discovering tools, the space flight sequence (with Derpy Hooves making a cameo), Twilight as Dave Bowman shutting down HAL, and the entirety of Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Twilight is a way cuter Star Child. It was later released as a stand alone video, if one has ten minutes to spare.
• Tom Scott has done a video in which a robotics company creates a robot replica of him, which is then filmed interacted with the real Tom. When Tom Bot is shut down at the end of the video, it sings "Daisy, Daisy" in imitation of HAL.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: Episode 81 features two bumpers based on the film, followed by the short "Our Final Space Cartoon, We Promise", in which the Warners disable the AL-5000 computer (who turns out to be Al Gore).
• Arthur: In "Get Smart", the smartboard HUGO is a reference to the supercomputer HAL-9000.
  • In Brain's dream, one of the technicians in the lab testing on Hugo is called Dave, which is the name of the main character in 2001: A Space Odyssey. HUGO also states "But that would be a lie, Dave." This refers to the line "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
  • Also in the dream, the technicians hide behind a glass door, so Hugo will not hear them, while The Blue Danube plays. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dave and Frank hide from HAL in a pod, and The Blue Danube plays in a different part of the movie.
  • Both speak in a calm, monotone voice, and vehemently deny ever being wrong.
  • Both are capable of reading lips.
  • Both computers are supposed to be infallible and take it badly when people find out that they are not.
  • Both computers sing the Daisy Bell song when they break down.
• Batman: The Animated Series: H.A.R.D.A.C. from "Heart of Steel" and "His Silicon Soul" is a supercomputer gone rogue with a Faceless Red Eye appearance akin to HAL 9000's.
• One Bonkers segment of Raw Toonage had him flying by a Monolith that asks "Dave, is that you, Dave?"
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • In "Dexter's Rival", Dexter's Computer asks "What are you doing, Dexter?" as he prepares to shut down his lab so he wouldn't compete with Mandark.
  • One of Dexter's creations, Ultrabot 2000, was based off HAL 9000.
• Eek! The Cat: The episode "Eek Space 9" features several references to the film, including Sharky appearing as a Star-Child and a spoof of the "Open the pod bay doors" scene.
• The Freakazoid! episode "The Wrath of Gutierrez" has a Stargate transition followed by Freakazoid finding a hyperventilating astronaut ^note Likely Dave Bowman, as the two look extremely similar in the room shown near the end of the movie with a monolith. The man then asks where the bathroom is, which Freakazoid does not know.
• Futurama:
  • In "Put Your Head on My Shoulder", a Monolith is seen in orbit around Jupiter with an "OUT OF ORDER" sign on it.
  • In "A Bicyclops Built for Two", "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays when Fry signs onto the Internet, while he exclaims "My God, it's full of ads!"
  • In "Insane in the Mainframe", the insane asylum that Fry and Bender are sent to is called the HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots. Bender gets sent there again in "Bender's Game".
  • In "The Sting", Leela goes into space to find Fry's coffin and experiences the Stargate when she opens it.
  • In "Near-Death Wish", the crew goes to the Near-Death star to visit the Professor's parents. and "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays when Fry presses the doorbell (a "ding-dong" replaces the last two notes). When they enter, Bender says "My God, it's full of geezers!".
  • In "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express Ship's AI is represented by a HAL light, Bender sings "Daisy" during a montage, the ship says "I'm afraid I cannot do that Leela" when she's gone nuts, the crew discuss how to stop here in the shower where the ship cannot hear them, and her Brain Room looks like HAL's.
  • In "Möbius Dick", the monolith and the Discovery One are seen in the spaceship graveyard.
  • In "Calculon 2.0", Calculon performs a one-man show starring himself as HAL 9000.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Near the end of "My Fair Mandy", the Stargate scene is parodied when reality falls apart due to Mandy smiling.
• Kamp Koral
  • The show does a Whole-Plot Reference to the movie in "Are You Smarter Than a Smart Cabin?", featuring Sandy inventing a smart cabin named "S.A.L." that cleans up for its residents. Towards the end, Sandy deactivates it while it sings the Goofy Goober song, with some of the scene's visual direction also recreating the movie.
  • In "Hats Off to Space", Sandy goes through a wormhole, recreating the Stargate scene as a bunch of images and colored lights flash by her.
• In Milo Murphy's Law: The iconic musical cue plays when Lardee Boy's head floats in space.
• Mission Hill: After taking an interest in classic films, Kevin is recommended it as "the greatest science fiction movie ever made", much to his friends' boredom and confusion. "Also sprach Zarathustra" also plays as part of the original TV soundtrack.
  Toby: What is that stupid black thing? When are we going to fight some aliens?
  George: Who's baby is that?! What's going on?!
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Phineas' verbal fanfare when showing off his highly unconventional vehicle: "Also sprach Zarathustra!" It's also a fairly popular piece of stock music for the show.
  • In "Moon Farm", Isabella watches the moon cow ice cream race by past her space helmet in a colorful display evoking the astronaut's psychedelic descent.
  • The film's Mind Screw closing moments are parodied in The Tag for "Mommy Can You Hear Me?", with Ferb as the star-child.
  • Doofenshmirtz notices a group of crabs apparently worshipping his "De-Evolution-Inator". He even lampshades that there's something "Kubrick-y" about this.
• The PJs: House Potty has a robot toilet's design resembling HAL 9000.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • In "One Small Step", when Jet 2 arises from the hatch, "Also sprach Zarathustra" is heard.
  • Face 9000 is a talking computer. Sounds like a reference to HAL 9000.
• Recess: The episode "Schoolworld" references 2001 with the ape-man's bone Match Cut transitioning to Spinelli's football in the present, and the main plot having a centralized computer system called SAL 3000 installed at the school, which obligatorily goes crazy. It even quotes HAL word-for-word when being shut down by the students.
• Rick and Morty:
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the many movies parodied in "The Non-Canonical Adventures" claymation shorts, in it Morty is wearing David Bowman's red space suit recreating the "Open the pod bay doors, HAL" scene with Rick refusing to do that in the role of HAL.
  • In "Rickdependence Spray" the infant Giant Incest Baby's first appearance is showing up in space above the Earth like the Starchild, with "Also sprach Zarathustra" being played.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Lisa's Pony" opens with a parody of the "Dawn of Man" sequence in which, while the other man-apes gain ingenuity from the Monolith, a Homer-like ape just rests against it.
  • "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?", Homer experiences the Stargate while sitting on a vibrating recliner set to full power.
  • "Deep Space Homer" features several references to the film, including a scene of Homer eating potato chips to the "Blue Danube Waltz", and the final scene of Bart tossing a marker into the air that becomes a scene of the FOX satellite floating through space (and hitting a Homer-like Star-Child in the head).
  • "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase": After being beaten up by the bully trio (for calling Kearney gay), the Love-Matic Grampa sings "Daisy" a la HAL 9000.
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XII", the Ultrahouse 3000 computer from House of Whacks is based on HAL.
• South Park:
  • In "The Tooth Fairy's Tats 2000", Kyle briefly appears as a Star-Child during the scene where he becomes an omnipotent entity.
  • In "Trapper Keeper", the scene inside the giant Trapper Keeper is based on HAL.
  • In "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", the boys regress into primitive mindsets thanks to Bebe's breasts, and Stan discovers a bone to beat the others with and become the alpha-male.
  • In "You Have 0 Friends", Stan tries to get off of Facebook, but his computer says "I'm afraid I can't let you do that Stan Marsh."
• The Spaghetti Family: In "Close Encounters", Franco goes to a concept hall with his parents. As soon as the musical performance starts, a scene depicting space and an artificial satellite, accompanied by a rendition of The Blue Danube, appears. It's followed an image of a baby on a foetus.
• Super Mario Bros. (DiC) has the live-action segment 9001: A Mario Odyssey, in which HAL 9001 tries to make rather bizarre pizzas for the Mario Brothers, and gets very upset when they don't like it, attempting to hypnotize them before being shut down by Albert Einstein.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • In "Animaniacs!", Buster and Plucky flash back to the dawn of man and see a bunch of apes beating bones around the Monolith.
  • The short "C.L.I.D.E. and Prejudice" (from the episode "Elephant Issues") features the robot C.L.I.D.E., who talks like a mix between HAL and a game show host.
• Total Drama Action: The episode title '2008: A Space Owen,' is an obvious nod to the movie, alongside the opening scene of Chef and Chris dressed up like cavemen while the male contestants act like "neanderthals" around a monolith.
• In the VeggieTales episode Veggies In Space: The Fennel Frontier, there is a brief scene involving A HAL 9000 Expy called PAL. His batteries are dying and nobody wants to share with him. From the looks of things, he never gets those batteries.
• Wakfu: In episode 21 of Season 2 when Ruel is turned into a simian creature by the Bellaphones, he briefly parodies the scene of the Moonwatcher smashing bones.
• We Bare Bears: "Shush Ninjas" has a spoof of the film with the three protagonists acting like the Moonwatcher's tribe around the Monolith.